For those of us who believe Unnatural Selection is an important problem, the Flynn effect has been troublesome.  Unnatural Selection posits that people are getting dumber, while the Flynn effect notes that IQ scores are rising.  However two new papers show that the Flynn effect has apparently been reversed in Northern Europe!  Does this mean the effect is no longer "in effect", or that it never was, and/or does this apply only to post-industrial societies?  Inquiring minds want to know... 

The NYTimes reports on Thrillionaires, the new Space Capitalists.  Included are Paul Allen, the money behind Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, Elon Musk, founder (and funder) of SpaceX, and John Carmack, the brains and money behind Amarillo Aerospace.  "The rise of the space money men is a unique moment in history, said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, a co-founder of the X Prize.  'There is sufficient wealth controlled by individuals to start serious space efforts,' he said.  What's more, they are frustrated, he went on, adding: 'The dreams and expectations that Apollo launched for all these entrepreneurs have failed to materialize.  And in fact, those who look into it realize that the cost of going into space has gone up and the reliability has, effectively, gone down.'"  This is great stuff, and future history in the making.  Read it!  [ via Xeni Jardin ] 

John Battelle reports Google to Expand Video Search on the Web.  Searching for video is a lot harder than searching for text.  It will be interesting to see whether it works! 

Kuro5hin wonders Who will Google Buy Next?  I like the off-the-wall choice of Tivo :)

Dave Winer is apparently gearing up to release a new OPML-based "instant outliner" at Gnomedex.  Scott Loftesness posted some reflections and suggested SubEthaEdit as a way to experience this...  I'm ready! 

Wow, practically a link on every word.  I must be reading too much Doc Searles...

Marshall Brain explains How to make a million dollars.  Basically, you start a business, and don't give up.  Being lucky helps, too :)  [ via Tom Coates ] 

The other day I linked spell with Flikr; a cool way to make words from pictures.  Jeff Atwood posted a bunch of excellent Flickr hacks, including the Flickr color picker, which is, well, cool... 

People have complained noted that the items in my new "splintered" RSS feed don't have titles, and hence show up either with just the date and time (in Firefox and Safari) or bogus HTML tags (in Thunderbird).  So I decided to do what SharpReader does, and make a title from the first few words of the item, stripping out all the HTML tags.  See if that's any better... 

Yeah, this is too weird.  Stare at it long enough, and the moving purple dots disappear, to be replaced by a single green one...  (click thumbnail to get the moving picture.)  This shows the way your brain "subtracts out" the effects of motion to build a static image.  [ via Rob Smith ]